[behnamoh]

> Persian

I'm glad the name of my native language is written correctly. In many cases, people say "Farsi", which is offensive to many Iranians because it's the Arabic version of the word "Parsi" (unlike Persian, Arabic doesn't have "p", "g", "ch", "zh").

It's like someone calling English "Anglaise" because that's how the French say it.

PS: Contrary to common belief, Persian and Arabic are totally different languages, though they have borrowed words from one another (think English and French). Persian is an Indo-European language whereas Arabic is Aramaic (same roots as Hebrew).

[crazygringo]

> It's like someone calling English "Anglaise" because that's how the French say it.

That is the case for some other languages, though. We call the language German rather than Deutsch because Germani was the Latin name for tribes in the area, for example.

Or native names get modified too -- in English we don't call it Espanish, just Spanish, even though it comes from español.

The names of languages in other languages tend to get modified in tons of different and random ways for lots of reasons. Is there really a reason to take offense at it?

It doesn't bother me that Italians call me an americano instead of an American. It's just a letter change. So why is it so bothersome that it's called Farsi rather than Parsi? Can't the change from "p" to "f" be seen as an interesting historical quirk, due to the fascinating effect of Arabic on European languages in the Middle Ages? At the same time that we got Arabic words like "algebra" and "alcohol"?

[FlyingSnake]

Interesting. This is the first time I’m hearing that Farsi is offensive to Iranians. None of my Irani friends have objected so I’m curious if I’m missing something.

Wikipedia says Farsi should be avoided in Western languages, but what about others? Persian is called Farsi in Indian subcontinent due to the deep historical connections we share. We have proverbs saying Farsi is the sign of a learned person etc.

[myth_drannon]

Small nitpicking, Arabic is from a different branch of Semitic languages than Aramaic or Hebrew (which are very similar).

And TIL I learned that Aramaic replaced Hebrew in Judea because the Persian Empire maintained Aramaic as the official administrative language, and Jews brought it back, coming back from the Babylonian captivity.

[omneity]

Arabic is not Aramaic. Please correct your sources.

I’m also quite curious about the sounds of “ch” and “zh” which exist in Arabic as ش and ج, or did you mean something else?

[behnamoh]

"ch" is written as "چ" in Persian (sounds like channel).

"zh" is written as "ژ" in Persian (sounds like bourgeoisie in French).

[omneity]

Looking at the Persian IPA table[0] for the letters you wrote, we get `/ʒ/` for `ژ` and `/tʃʰ/` for `چ`

In Arabic[1], there are two close phonemes: `/dʒ/` for `ج` and `/ʃ/` for `ش`

The difference in both phonemes is minimal and are practically affricates[2] of each other (where `d` or `t` can precede a `ʒ` or a `ʃ`), so it seems these sounds are present in both Arabic and Persian.

These variations are also within the dialectal distribution of either languages. For example `ج` is pronounced `/dʒ/` in Algeria and `/ʒ/` in Morocco.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Persian

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Arabic

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affricate